My black hair, my blue eyes, my smile--all belonged to someone else. It was like looking in a mirror brought from Wonderland where the reflection had a life of its own and laughed when you cried. Had I known at the beginning of the week that I would be meeting my doppleganger for the first time in my life, I would have said you were crazy, ludacris even, and in need of some serious psychotherapy. The true fact has always been that I am an only child, not a twin to Alex.

Alex. What a simple name. It's not even origional. It's probably the name of a long dead great great great grandfather given in an attempt to steal back the past for one more generation. Still, I guess it's not as bad as Kya.

It still makes me fuzzy to know I suddenly have a brother after 22 years of single childhood. I wonder if his life was like mine in any way, if his parents would take him to ballets and force him to take music lessons to the point where the fun was drummed out and all he wanted to do was scream. Did he have any of that?
He's comming over tonight for dinner, so maybe I'll ask then.

What do you say to your twin? Do you ask who they loved in highschool? What their favorite color is and if it's the same as yours? If you get hurt do they feel it? That would certainly account for most of the weird moments of unexplained pain I've felt.

I can't believe I have a brother.

I hear the door downstairs creek and the tones of my mother's musical soprono voice rising up the stairs welcoming someone in.

He's here now. Here goes nothing.

Reluctantly I sigh and save my journal entry then close the document. Digital journals are so wonderful because no one can simply take a key, open the hard drive, and push their noses into my business. Some things like this are meant to be secret. Thank God for encryption codes.

Ready or not, I have to walk down those stairs and face my destiny-- my missing sibling. I suppose to him I'm the lost member of the Rhodes clan and the one who's been out of place for so long. What if my last name isn't even Rhodes? Oh lord! What if it's Chatton, or Morphiason, or Zigfield, or something weird like that? What if I was the one switched and he was raised by people who could be my real parents? I'm so frustrated and confused I could scream.

Pacing acomplishes nothing but more worn space in the light eggshell carpet of my neat bedroom. If what they say about the opposits of twins is true, then his must look like the aftermath of a KISS concert.

My cat looks at me with glassy green eyes and rolls over to fall back asleep on my bed. I look at him with something equal to dark envy.
"You have it good, Finn," I say, running my hands through my hair. "At least you know your seven brothers and sisters live across the street with the Carters. Hell, you know you have brothers and sisters."

Finn stretches belly up like a beached whale, not interested at all in his human's dilema. I flop down angrily on the edge of the bed and fiddle with the corner of my grandmother's hand made quilt.

How could he do this to me? My life was fine until Alex what's-his- name dropped into it. I had a strong understanding of who I was, what I was going to be, who my family was, and everything that stables a life. My friends knew me as 'Most Likely to Succeed' after high school because of my sensibility. I was the rock of their confidence, the foundation of trust and stability, the granite pedistal of constance.

Don't look now, guys.

One trip into the local music store shattered that pedistal into shards of jagged stone. Wearily, my head drops to my hands and I can't help but feel like I'm drowning. Who decided they could throw me into the middle of this deep end with weights on my feet? Not me. I was happy before Alex showed up; damn satisfied with myself.

Or was I? Something doesn't feel right in me anymore, like a part of me had suddenly tumbled into--or out of--place.

It's then that I realize the hate I feel really isn't hate, but fear, more fear than what I should be feeling. My interest in the paranormal snaps to life instantly. Can he feel it? Can I feel his? Is he as afraid as I am, or am I simply being over dramatic?

Of course he is. Who wouldn't be? He has to deal with this, too, and to somehow place the scattered puzzle pieces of his life together again after someone shook the box. He probably has as much preconceptions about me as I do about him and I wouldn't blame him.

He probably thinks he's the one who's been lost.

I don't know what to think now. Deftly, I braid my long black hair and tie it off with a blue scrunchi. I stand and look at my face in the vanity mirror like I've done hundreds of times before, only now hoping it won't speak back to me. I mess slightly with my bangs when I hear my mother calling for me.

It's all come down to this--this one agnoizing moment of getting to know the only human being in the world to almost indenticaly share my DNA. It seems unreal to know that the man downstairs and I were together constantly for the first 9 months of our exhistance. As strange as it sounds, I actualy feel comforted. And complete. When I think of how it might have been to have a brother to bug me, or get me in trouble, or conspire against my parents with, a smile curves the ends of my red painted lips.

I can't believe I have a brother.

My mother calls for me again, so I brace myself and take a deep breath, shoving self doubt back into its hole. "Misplaced or not, Alex, you're not alone anymore," I say resolutely as I grip the brass door handle, "and neither am I."

The door opens to the light sounds of voices--two men and and a woman. My mother and father and Alex. I bite my lip and listen to the chorus of their voices travel up the stairs--my mother's soprono, my father's baritone, ...and my brother's tenor.

I brace myself for the inevitable long evening and a whisper a silent prayer to the empty second floor, "Please, God, don't let his last name be Zigfield."

THE END.

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